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by Dave Nice, Steve Bolton, and Nick Bishop - IBM CICS Explorer Development This article explains how to provide a web-based installation of CICS Explorer. This is useful for system administrators who want to deploy the software to multiple desktops and provide automatic updates. The solution uses Java™ Web Start, which is an industry standard solution for deployment of Java applications from the web (and as such is not part of CICS Explorer or its support infrastructure). If you have any problems implementing it consult Java... [More]

The CICS Explorer can very easily be used as a periscope to see what is going on in your CICS System. You probably currently look at running tasks in the system by using CEMT INQUIRE TASK or by using a monitor product, but did you know that the CICS Explorer provides as nice, easy, and graphical way to do this as well? Let me show you how. Once you've established a connection to the host system, you can use the Operations > Tasks view to see the running tasks in your CICS regions. By default, the following columns are displayed:... [More]

The "Test Feature" of the WebSphere MQ Explorer was added in WebSphere MQ V7. This tool examines your WebSphere MQ object definitions, and can spot configuration errors. Test results are displayed in the WebSphere MQ Explorer Test Results view, which opens the first time that you run a test. In my testing for this new feature, I defined some WebSphere MQ objects with some very obvious errors. For example, my remote queue specified: transmission queue, remote queue, and a remote queue manager object that did not exist. My sender... [More]

IMS Enterprise Suite Explorer was made generally available late last year. It's very cool, and there is a neat neat video that shows the IMS team talking out quite how cool it is. There's another video that is more a tutorial. Why am I telling you this? If you watched the videos, or if you are looking at the screen shot below, you'll notice that the the IMS Explorer is based on the Eclipse framework, and it includes a perspective called z/OS. This lets you connect to z/OS and do stuff such as list and edit data sets, look at jobs and their... [More]

CICS Explorer not only lets you connect to CICS regions, and z/OS through FTP, but it also is a platform for installing plugins for other tools. This blog entry shows how to get each of the plugins on the IBM CICS Explorer downloads site installed inside the CICS Explorer 1.1 - once you've done this you can get a perspective bar with lots of cool things running together. First thing is to know where to get the plugins from - if you follow the link from CICS Explorer that lets you go to the downloads page, you will see a number of links to get... [More]

CPSM (CICSPlex System Manager) makes managing your CICS systems much easier. It is also a requirement if you are going to use the CICS Explorer to view and manage multiple CICS regions. But CPSM can be a challenge to setup for the first time. One of the questions we often get in Level 2 is how to setup a basic CICSPlex that spans multiple LPARs. That task involves setting up a CMAS on each LPAR and connecting them so that they can talk to each other. While there are a number of ways to do that, I will provide sample JCL below that you... [More]

I have to admit that I put off installing the CICS Explorer for a long time because I was so busy. I finally took the time to install the CICS Explorer last year and was surprised at how quickly I was using it. I really like it and I think you will too. If you haven't already started using the CICS Explorer, I hope this post encourages you to start soon. See my other blog post " Getting the latest CICS Explorer version " for details on downloading or updating your CICS Explorer. What is the CICS Explorer? As you probably already... [More]

I've been working with CICS for quite a while and I thought I would share a few tips regarding CICS event processing. I want to talk about the common base event (CBE) format for this post because it is a bit different from the other formats. The CBE format has an additional layer that wasn't obvious when I started working with it. Hopefully this will save you some time. CICS events offer a new way to capture business data without making modifications to existing CICS programs. CICS can capture and emit events based on an event binding that... [More]

As a primary support person for CICS Transaction Server for z/VSE and CICS Explorer that runs on z/VSE, I have been privileged to participate in the WAVV (World Alliance of VSE, VM and LINUX) Conferences for the past 9 years. I have also been able to meet and work with a large number of our z/VSE clients throughout the world. CICS Transaction Server for z/VSE was introduced and widely accepted by most all of our z/VSE clients. However, unfortunately, there was not much activity to provide upgrades on enhancements, except those... [More]

Have you been using the CICS Explorer but want to start using the newest functionality that's available or are you just installing CICS Explorer for the first time. In either case, I hope you'll find this blog helpful! See my other blog post " Start using the CICS Explorer today! " to learn why I think you'll like using the CICS Explorer. How to get the latest version of CICS Explorer The CICS Explorer isn't shipped with CICS TS V4 or available to order as a separate component of CICS TS V3. The CICS Explorer is only available from... [More]

One of the problems that administrators hear from their users is that either a CICS Transaction Gateway (CICS TG) is not available, or the CICS server is returning errors. Having a quick way to confirm or deny these problems can be of great benefit and fortunately the CICS TG plug-in for the CICS Explorer provides such functionality. From the Gateways view you can right click on any of the Gateway daemons and from the menu select 'Test Gateway Connection'. This will then attempt to connect to the Gateway... [More]

The CICS Explorer is a great tool for a systems programmer to manage their CICS resources. Whenever I am working on a CICS test system to recreate a problem, I find myself going to the Explorer to create and install different resources rather than using CEDA or CEMT through a 3270 green screen. One function in particular that I want to highlight is the capability the Explorer provides for viewing and editing CSD groups. The CICS Explorer allows you to very easily look at all of the group definitions in a particular CICS region. To... [More]